Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Ersatz Music Review: David Bowie's Heathen
This is what I've been listening to all weekend long as I've been hammering out the chapters for the new book. Bowie seems to have returned to "form" with this album, though what that really means is that there's a new confidence in the way he approaches the material. He's not trying yet again to reinvent himself for a new audience or dabbling in musical styles that don't suit his voice or singing style.

I’m writing about it primarily because all of the critics I've read so far seem to have missed the point, always going on about Bowie digging into his own "roots" for inspiration for his album. Doing a cover of The Pixies' "Cactus" hardly strikes me as heading back to one's own roots. The album if anything is an unabashed throwback to earlier musical days – I’d like to say that it could be though of as a "lost" album, continuing on from "Scary Monsters", and as if "Let's Dance" never happened, but there’s a maturity in his handling of the material that simply wasn't present back then. Okay, it's hard to escape the "roots" argument, but the difference here is a new level of confidence that was lacking in previous efforts.

"Slow Burn" is a song destined to make it to the next Bowie "hits" compilation, or ought to, at any rate, as it stands out from the rest of what is, for once, a completely listenable album. I have to say I love hearing Bowie doing Frank Black, and am surprised that it works as well as it does on Cactus. And doing a cover of a Hasil Adkins song ("Gemini Spacecraft") shows he hasn't lost his touch for tackling plain loopy material and somehow elevating it. I also can't get away from the idea that "Slip Away" is some lost song from the Labyrinth soundtrack; lyrically it doesn’t fit, but the production and the baseline remind me very much of some of the tunes from what is otherwise an unremarkable soundtrack.

Am sure die-hard Bowie fans will love this album -- we've certainly been very patient with ol' David’s meanderings for the past decade or so. Am not sure it’s destined to make a lot of converts with a younger crowd, but I’m so out of touch with that scene that it’s hard for me to say really.